* *

There was no priest within reach. A couple of men had ridden out early,
dispatched by Marjorie within half an hour of her awaking--to Dethick,
to Hathersage, and to every spot within twenty miles where a priest
might be found, with orders not to return without one. But the long day
had dragged out: and when dusk was falling, still neither had come back.
The country was rain-soaked and all but impassable, she learned later,
across valley after valley, where the streams had risen. And nowhere
could news be gained that any priest was near; for, as a further
difficulty, open inquiry was not always possible, in view of the news
that had come to Booth's Edge last night. The girl had understood that
the embers were rising again to flame in the south; and who could tell
but that a careless word might kindle the fire here, too. She had been
urged by Anthony to hold herself more careful than ever, and she had
been compelled to warn her messengers.

* * * * *

It was soon after dusk had fallen--the heavy dusk of a December
day--that her mother had come back again to consciousness. She opened
her eyes wearily, coming back, as Marjorie had herself that morning,
from that strange realm of heavy and deathly sleep, to the pale phantom
world called "life"; and agonising pain about the heart stabbed her wide
awake.

"O Jesu!" she screamed.

Then she heard her daughter's voice, very steady and plain, in her ear.

"There is no priest, mother dear. Listen to me."

"I cannot! I cannot!... Jesu!"

Her eyes closed again for torment, and the sweat ran down her face. The
slow poison that had weighted and soaked her limbs so gradually these
many months past, was closing in at last upon her heart, and her pain
was gathering to its last assault. The silent, humorous woman was
changed into one twitching, uncontrolled incarnation of torture.

Then again the voice began:

"Jesu, Who didst die for love of me--upon the Cross--let me die--for
love of Thee."

"Christ!" moaned the woman more softly.

"Say it in your heart, after me. There is no priest. So God will accept
your sorrow instead. Now then--"

Then the old words began--the old acts of sorrow and love and faith and
hope, that mother and daughter had said together, night after night, for
so many years. Over and over again they came, whispered clear and sharp
by the voice in her ear; and she strove to follow them. Now and again
the pain c